Wife said I can have my hardwood floors on our remodel. She wanted tile but you don't get no where the same affect. And any engineered is out the question.

Was going to go with an antiqued or handscraped. Said if our two dogs tear them up, then I have to tear them up. Seems kind of unreasonable but at least it is the start of negotiations. And, no, I don't wear the pants when it comes to the interior decisions. I get the outside, she gets the inside, or so she says.

It did bring up an interesting question though. How do you or can you reasonably refinish handscraped floors? With them being hand scraped it seems you would smooth them out if you refinished them or is going back and re-hand scraping part of the refinishing process?

I have hand scraped in our house, we went with a medium scrape. Just sitting here looking at them, I bet you could go with a light scrape, and if the dogs mess them up re scrape them to medium.

You would sand and rescrape them.

Handscraped wood floors will hold up better than any other wood product. Unless your dogs are terrors I doubt there will be an issue. The advantage to real wood floors is you can sand down and start over. You will need to cut your interior doors down. Any trim carpenter can handle the interior ones. You'll need a door company most limely for exterior doors.

We have engineered distressed (handscraped) hardwood floors and had a dog. There were times she made scratches and we would use wood markers to color in the scratch.

Engineered floors have a very thin layer of distressed wood veneer over the actual tongue and groove material which is normally like plywood. Solid wood floors are just that, solid wood. They can be sanded and refinished.

When we bought this home 6 years ago the solid wood plank floor portion included the kitchen, dining room, and a wide area leading to the front door. A lot of the boards were cupped and there were some scratching by previous owners (pets, furniture, or whatever). There was one area where we were told a dishwasher leak had damaged a few boards. We had the sellers pay to have the bad boards replaced (wood was from local forested trees so it could still be matched) and the floors sanded and then satin poly put down. 6 years later, not a scratch can be seen.

first off, what breed of dogs and why are they wearing steel cleats in the house?

scraped wood should not have a problem with dogs scratching them unless they are large/heavy then probably only surface scratches. hickory is probably the most durable of the wood floors, maple if you want light color.

unless they get gouged you can fix scratches with the color sticks or some water based polyurethane (make sure what the surface is first, should be poly).
light scratches should come out with a quality wood floor polish.